High Life Decoded: Everything You Need to Know to Not Get Fleeced on Coffee

There has never been a better time to be a coffee drinker. From neighborhood bodegas selling bottled cold-brew to pour-over bars popping around the country, the diversity and availability of good coffee is at an all time high. But what is “good” coffee, anyway? Like beer, coffee has a way of eliciting knee-jerk populist reactions—for every Aeropress-toting coffee geek, there are legions of folks happily running on Dunkin’ and expressing righteous indignation at the proliferation of $5 lattes.

As with all things, though, you shouldn’t knock so-called “speciality” coffee until you’ve not only tried it, but also learned about what really makes it different from the hot black muck we all used to slurp down with half and half.

With resurgence in the craft of making coffee, a hierarchy has emerged among consumers in how they order or brew their routine cups. To find out what separates a Blue Bottle pour-over from a $1 cup of gas-station sludge, we hollered at brew pro Erin Meister to debunk common myths and decode the buzzwords that have taken over the coffee-shop experience. Now, when you opt for one or the other, at least you’ll be making a fully informed choice.

The expert: Erin Meister had her first cup of coffee at age nine. Despite the half-cup of milk and sugar mixed in, Meister says it became an instant Sunday ritual until she was old enough to understand why drinking coffee was more than just something adults do. After working for years as a barista and a journalist who specialized in coffee and food, Meister became a member of customer support and a coffee educator at Counter Culture. “I just want people to have better coffee always,” she says as she waxes poetic about her current fix, Haru from Yirgacheffe, a citrusy Ethiopian coffee that is just coming into season. Meister insists that she is not a coffee snob—her least favorite thing, in fact, is to isolate consumers with the notion that you must be a coffee nerd to truly enjoy it. Still, to be intelligent coffee drinkers, aren’t we supposed to be able to detect its nuances, like those in wine?

Let’s find out…

What's the difference between Fair Trade and Direct Trade?

Meister says: There are separate European and U.S. fair trade organizations that give different nuances to the term, but in short: Fair Trade is a certification given to coffee growers who are a part of a small farm hold, joined by a co-op, so they can pool their resources. It is an economy of scale.
By being a part of a group, fair trade farmers can earn more money than they would without representation or on a regular market—presumably more than they would for large corporations like Folgers—and it allows folks without a large plot of land to have a shot at making a living. Buyers like Crop to Cup specifically buy fair trade to empower smaller farmers by giving them more financial stability and access to buyers they wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach (think of your local farmer selling you eggs).
Direct Trade—used by places like Counter Culture and Stumptown—is similar, but rather than follow the specifications of the Fair Trade organization, these smaller distributors have created their own specifications for which coffee farmers they will work with (though many of the requirements are the same).

Myth: Coffee beans last for six months as long as you put it in the fridge.

Coffee beans are perishable. They start to loose their sparkle about two weeks after roasting, so popping them in your fridge and pulling them out six months later doesn’t work. Of course, it won't do anything bad to you—you won't get sick—but they lose flavor and taste.

What does “shade grown" mean?

Meister says: This describes the way a farm is designed around coffee. Coffee beans grow well under a canopy of plants in their native environment, the rainforest. However, beans grown in the shade take longer to mature, so farmers often cut down the taller trees to expose the coffee plants to sun, which speeds up the maturation and therefore the production process. But this damages the ecosystem in that area.
Shade grown is not always the best way to grow coffee, but organizations like the Rainforest Alliance advocate to preserve shade-grown coffee in favor of farm health and conservation. It is important in places like Latin America, where they are combating deforestation and protecting plants from disease.

Myth: Espresso is a stronger type of coffee.

Meister says: Yes, it is stronger, but only because it’s a much more concentrated way to make coffee—it’s not a different type of coffee. It’s a method of making coffee, like a pour-over or French press; it's just like how scrambling is just another method of making an egg.

When you get “single-origin" beans, what does that really mean?

Meister says: As opposed to blends, which comprise roasts and beans from various places to make more complex flavors, single origin means—as the name suggests—that the beans are coming from a single place. That place can mean a number of things: It could come from one farm, one region, or one country. But all coffee that carries that mark has some degree of place attached to it.

Myth: Organic coffee is great if you can afford it, but not necessary.

Meister says: Buying organic coffee is probably the only way to ensure that we will have coffee 60 to 70 years from now. The more chemicals that we use in growing coffee beans, the less coffee is growing overall—this way of conventional growing (of any plants) is eliminating our ability to produce them in the first place. It’s important to buy things you know have been purchased fairly and grown responsibly.

Is cold-brew iced coffee really that special?

Meister says: This is a method of brewing coffee in which you allow the grinds rest and release into water that is room temperature rather than hot. People like this method because it brings out the chocolatey flavors in the coffee rather than the fruit-like characteristics that come out when using hot water, which people often call acidity. Cold brew is really smooth and drinkable. To me, it tastes like Yoo-Hoo.

Myth: A $5 cup of coffee is just price-gouging by hipster coffee shops.

Meister says: We should pay much more for coffee than we do. It is incredibly labor-intensive. Each bean is picked, sorted, and processed by hand; anywhere from 35 to 45 hands have touched each bean before it gets roasted. We think of coffee as a fuel—like it’s a right we have and not something we have to pay people to make. Sometimes I get shocked too, but it’s like one day ordering a $2 beer and on another ordering an $18 cocktail—sometimes you need each, one gives you a completely different perspective…Also, I’m so sick of the word hipster. At this point, who isn’t hipster?

Why is a pour-over any different from a pot of coffee?

Meister says: If the way your coffee tastes means a lot to you, then using an individual-drip method—a single serving of pour-over coffee—allows you to experiment and enhance the taste and feel. You can grind the beans and get a scale and weigh them; if it’s just that it tastes good and you want to make it more repeatable, there are ways to ensure that. I like that it takes you out of the robot coffee-pot-mentality; you have total control.
What’s funny is that until 1950, this was the only way you could make coffee. It’s like how people forget there’s a way to make popcorn without a microwave and meanwhile, people have been doing it for a century. You don’t have to getting a fancy contraption like at Blue Bottle; you just need a small cone filter and a grinder to pour the water over the grinds yourself. Of course, I always want people to have better coffee, but I don’t want people to think you have to become a coffee nerd or a rocket scientist to make it right. At the end of the day—even though it’s my life and my job—it is just coffee and I want people to enjoy it.

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